Originally published in the Women’s Studies International Forum Journal:

“This article is a feminist response to the campaigning activism and queer and transgender theory which promotes the ‘degendering’ of public toilets. This campaign originates in the demands of men who transgender to access women’s toilets. Activists argue that sex
segregation of toilets is the result of nineteenth century moralism and is a discriminatory
practice. They say that degendered toilets would be safer for women because the good
men would protect women from aggressors, and they show a remarkable degree of
insensitivity to women’s needs and interests. The campaign is increasingly effective, with
schools in the US and local councils in the UK moving to degender toilets in response. This
article will argue that the safety of women as a group requires that toilet provision should
remain sex segregated or take the form of individual cubicles that offer privacy and safety
to all users.”

Sheila Jeffreys: “The practice of reproductive surrogacy is in the news in Australia because of the story of a Thai child, Gammy, a twin who was apparently abandoned by the buyers because he was sick. They took his healthy sister.

This story should not be seen as just an individual bad news story. It has much to tell us about the effects of commercial surrogacy.”

“Scholarly research, like many things, comes inbuilt with certain assumptions, biases and omissions.

Take history and historical research. Yawning over centuries and straddling continents, so often the history recorded, studied and researched is a history of the accomplishments, milestones and experiences of men.

It is the history of royal bloodlines, religions, battlefields, explorers and scientists. Women have often been reduced to the footnoted wife or mother of a notable historical figure.

However, this account of history often poses as neutral, and just the way things happened.

Feminist academic and researcher Professor Sheila Jeffreys says much research in the social sciences does not notice or mention women.”

“In the weeks leading up to Professor Jeffreys brief visit to Tasmania, Scarlett Alliance contacted Whistleblowers Tasmania, Hobart Quakers and the Tasmanian University Law School in an attempt to have a planned Public Forum and Staff Seminar cancelled. These attempts took the form of telephone calls and emails and included a barrage of accusations against Professor Jeffreys in order to discredit and attack her professional integrity. In addition, a threat was made to “smear” the Quakers (The Religious Society of Friends) if they did not cancel the Public Forum at the Friends Meeting House.

The international campaign against Professor Jeffreys is typical of the tactics used against whistleblowers by global industries who want to justify the impacts of their industries and further expand them and this is particularly apparent with the globalisation of the Sex Industry.”

Originally published in The Australian by Patricia Karvelas, July 27th 2013.

THE Family Court and the parents of gender-confused children are presiding over a generation of institutionalised child abuse” by allowing young kids to change their gender, risking the possibility that some may have deep regrets as adults.

In Gender Hurts: a feminist analysis of the politics of transgenderism — to be published early next year — Sheila Jeffreys, a professor of sexual politics at Melbourne University, argues that Australia is violating the rights of children by allowing this practice to continue. Continue reading →

Originally published in The Australian by Natasha Bita, January 26th 2013.

“Under the right to gender identity, male-bodied persons, in many cases with penises intact, are likely to be permitted to enter women’s toilets,” she says in a submission to the Senate inquiry. “There are quite a surprising number of cases in which men wearing women’s clothing have been arrested for … secret photographing of women using the toilets and showers, peeping at women from adjacent stalls … (and) luring children into women’s toilets in order to assault them.” Continue reading →